The Future of Compensation for TF2 Mappers: A Community / Valve Discussion

As far as the Workshop goes, I know people were talking once about the possibility that it could do away with the need for version suffixes on everything as well as having to download new versions when they connect to the server; there would just be one version of the map that propagates updates automatically to people. What I'm wondering though is how that would work for people who haven't already subscribed to the map. Would they automatically be subscribed to a map when they first connect to a server that's running it? I don't know how it works in CS:GO because I don't have it.

That sounds like an implementation detail that is Valve's problem to deal with, not ours.

We're just idea generators, come up with a bullet list of suggestions and let Valve digest it.

Subscribing to maps sounds like the most amazing thing. It's so hard to get a server to keep up to date on their own.

risky tho in case the update is broken or just sucks

Even just a notification sent to those who subscribe with an option to download would be enough. I agree that servers automatically updating immediately would be risky.

Then again, that could always be the place you post your updates after you've tested it a bit.

Hopefully they'd have a feature for two versions of the map.. the "release version" that people get by default and a beta channel that lets interested parties test out the latest and greatest. Just give the two a different file name and no one gets surprised.

Workshop technically already allows that, but they'll show up as two separate projects.

On the topic of monetization, I wonder if it would work to take a flat percentage of all key sales and put it in one big pool to divide between each map each month. The more maps you have, the more shares of the pool you'd have.

This way is just a matter of book keeping rather than implementing a complex system in game to track crates and all that.

The downside to this is that a really really popular map would get the same compensation as a map that is rarely played. But honestly I'm not even sure if that's a factor that should even be considered anyway.

Crash said:

The downside to this is that a really really popular map would get the same compensation as a map that is rarely played. But honestly I'm not even sure if that's a factor that should even be considered anyway.

Click to expand...

Considered? I think that's a game breaker downside. Compensation should absolutely be based on popularity. (I am not saying completely, but even-split is bad)
If you went for even split, I think that might also get the item guys upset.

I'm honestly not familiar with how that all works for modelers.

I think it's a percentage of each key that unboxes one of their items, and a percentage from in game store purchases.

I think pay-per-play is fair, especially if Valve ramps up map adoption as much as the OP suggests they want to. You don't want to get into a situation where some horribly balanced disaster makes the cut and no one plays it, earning the same compensation as a different map that has a dozen 24/7 servers dedicated to it.

I'm pretty sure Valve already tracks the maps played on all servers, if not that they certainly have gigabytes worth of data about what's popular on the official Valve servers. It wouldn't be hard at all to use that information to calculate the percentage each map earns.

Perhaps a relatively small "signing bonus" or whatever you want to call it that all maps get when Valve adopts them, then scale residuals based on popularity.

Crash said:

On the topic of monetization, I wonder if it would work to take a flat percentage of all key sales and put it in one big pool to divide between each map each month. The more maps you have, the more shares of the pool you'd have.

This way is just a matter of book keeping rather than implementing a complex system in game to track crates and all that.

The downside to this is that a really really popular map would get the same compensation as a map that is rarely played. But honestly I'm not even sure if that's a factor that should even be considered anyway.

Click to expand...

That's horrendous. doing it based off crate drops rather than splitting it through keys is a far fairer way of getting it proportional to a metric that actually matters: playtime. What's "popularity" anyway?

I'd probably lose out if it was swapped to this method since 1/2 of my maps are event maps that mostly see playtime during one week of the year, but it's still better than splitting the key sales evenly between maps.

Ah, I didn't realize they got a cut on the key sales as well.

edit: I missed a couple posts here, this was in reply to modelers getting a cut on keys.

So, I was talking with redrum from UGC. We were looking at the state of tf2 compared to other valve games and the relationship between the different tf2 communities, more precisely, the relationship between tf2 mapping, competitive tf2 and Valve.

conclusion:
relationship between mappers and valve, okay but not great.
relationship between comp and valve, could be much better.
relationship between comp and mapper, from okay to miserable. (esp. 6s)

we were looking at games like csgo and dota where the playerbase has successfully funded huge prize pools for competitive play. that's an other monetization problem tf2 is facing. competitve tf2 and tf2 mapping are both in a tight spot. Considering that most recent maps to be added to the game were primarily competitive maps, It got us thinking. Could we not incentivize collaboration between the competitive community and mappers by using map revenues to fund competitive events? you would end up with a symbiotic relationship that is a win situation for both mappers and the competitive community. They would get to keep their game fresh and exciting (which is much needed from my understanding) with more, higher quality maps and we end up with higher quality testing and a very supportive playerbase. More maps get recognised, more money goes into price pools. win/win on both parts.

I know the revenue stream might not be great (insuffisant) right now and that not all maps are comp maps. Granted, I might also be overly optimistic thinking we can unify all of tf2 in a single swing but I think we have a shot at fixing a lot of problems all at once.

That is, only if tf2m is actually willing to work with the competitive community, which I wouldn't count on, but you never know. Just throwing the idea out there. It could be a huge paradigm shift. The idea seemed appealing to me.

fubarFX said:

Could we not incentivize collaboration between the competitive community and mappers by using map revenues to fund competitive events?

Click to expand...

No, that's a terrible idea. In every other creative enterprise the artist is paid to produce a work. They are effectively selling a license to a company granting permission to use and promote the work.. any situation where an artist has to pay for the privilege of a company using their creations is predatory and unethical.

The feedback process doesn't change this, in general when a company is seeking a specific creation they draw it up as a list of requirements that must be met before any payment is given to the artist.

If UGC wants more money they have to do what every other sports enterprise does: bring in advertisers, attract sponsors, and sell tickets.

fubarFX said:

That is, only if tf2m is actually willing to work with the competitive community, which I wouldn't count on, but you never know. Just throwing the idea out there. It could be a huge paradigm shift. The idea seemed appealing to me.

Click to expand...

I think the problem here is that TF2 and comp TF2 are different games. We [mostly] don't play comp here.
Games like CSGO are entirely comp. The comp play and the pub play are the same game, that just isn't the case for TF2.

The next problem is that because we don't play comp, we're not making maps for comp. Any time we are we're ignoring what we'd normally be designing for. None of us want to make maps for some other group of players, we want to make maps for ourselves.

If you could unify comp TF2 and regular TF2, it'd go a MASSIVE way to unify the comp and mapping scene.

xzzy said:

No, that's a terrible idea. In every other creative enterprise the artist is paid to produce a work. They are effectively selling a license to a company granting permission to use and promote the work.. any situation where an artist has to pay for the privilege of a company using their creations is predatory and unethical.

The feedback process doesn't change this, in general when a company is seeking a specific creation they draw it up as a list of requirements that must be met before any payment is given to the artist.

If UGC wants more money they have to do what every other sports enterprise does: bring in advertisers, attract sponsors, and sell tickets.

Click to expand...

Redrum approached me about this as well, and I have to disagree (somewhat).

To be blunt, if the expectation is that any mapper who relies upon competitive communities for feedback is expected to pay money out of their own pocket to the comp communities to fund prize pools, then yah, thats not great. Even though I made a pretty good chunk from Valve, it really didn't last very long, and I'm pretty broke right now compared with pretty much anyone else who has a real job.

But, thats not really the sort of model that Redrum is talking about (Edit: I guess the above may actually be his expectation, if so I disagree with it). Basically, we should be looking more at the model from the item workshop, which allows creators to choose mentors/feedback providers/tool makers and so forth and valve compensates them out of their own pocket (they get a cut of valve's half of the item/key cost). So Valve pays the feedback source, the item maker gets their cut without any missing, and everyone is rewarded for the work they put in.

See the following for more info: http://steamcommunity.com/games/SteamWorkshop/announcements/detail/1819734886367365945 The primary issue of course, is that valve doesn't get a cut of stamps. The money goes 100% (minus taxes) to the map maker, where with items valve gets 50% (?).

I definitely think that feedback is essential to make anything good, and if Valve wants to provide money to groups to incentivise feedback, by all means! Why shouldn't they? But, I don't think any mapper will be well off enough in the immediate future to really take a cut from their payout.

I also disagree with the "advertisers, sponsors, tickets" bit. While something like that might be reasonable, in the end I see no reason why a part of the pie shouldn't be going to competitive communities as well, and to be honest, I don't think comp players are in a position where tickets/sponsors are going to be a valid or reliable way of maintaining prize pools. Or, to put it another way, ESEA already sells tickets, but they sell them to the players who play in the league, and that's where the prize pool comes from. And, while not a terrible system, its certainly not breaking bank for anyone involved (other than ESEA).

Maybe try to increase the incentive to buy map stamps? Maybe create a new trading card set for maps or something. During the summer sale I've been making sure to vote for the community choice to receive the trading cards. A lot of people aren't really interested in them, but there are a few. I'm not sure, just a small idea I had.

ScorpioUprising said:

Redrum approached me about this as well, and I have to disagree (somewhat).

To be blunt, if the expectation is that any mapper who relies upon competitive communities for feedback is expected to pay money out of their own pocket to the comp communities to fund prize pools, then yah, thats not great. Even though I made a pretty good chunk from Valve, it really didn't last very long, and I'm pretty broke right now compared with pretty much anyone else who has a real job.

But, thats not really the sort of model that Redrum is talking about.

Click to expand...

This is exactly the model he contacted me about, and asked me to commit to a percentage of any possible revenue that may come out of a map tested by them that is picked up by Valve.

YM said:

I think the problem here is that TF2 and comp TF2 are different games. We [mostly] don't play comp here.
Games like CSGO are entirely comp. The comp play and the pub play are the same game, that just isn't the case for TF2.

The next problem is that because we don't play comp, we're not making maps for comp. Any time we are we're ignoring what we'd normally be designing for. None of us want to make maps for some other group of players, we want to make maps for ourselves.

If you could unify comp TF2 and regular TF2, it'd go a MASSIVE way to unify the comp and mapping scene.

Click to expand...

Not likely to happen anytime soon. The competitive scene has been around for as long as TF2 has been, and has grown in its own peculiar/interesting direction since then. The competitive players don't really want to change to fit casual play, nor should they! Think about how many different map types exist in TF2 (make a list, stare at it for a while). Now imagine trying to make a league format that represented all of those map types! OMG! There aren't enough weeks in a league season to play them all, and most of them don't play well with competitive.

And, to be honest, I don't think anyone needs to play this game in a specific way. I think that one of the strengths of TF2 is that people choose their own specific experience. If someone only wants to play pl_hightower, they can do that. If someone only wants to play ctf, or a/d, or payload, they can choose to do so. Only wants to play a certain class? a certain type of server (saxton hale, perma crits, orange x)? They can do that. Why should competitive players be forced to play the game a certain way if no one else is forced to do so?

Obviously it would be great if comp play and casual play lined up, but the requirements on either side are staggering, and I don't think either side would have more fun if they compromised to try and reach a middle ground.

Also: CSGO is closer in comp and casual, but there certainly a variety of gamemodes and ways to play that are more attractive to beginners versus diehard pros. Gungame (arms race and the other one) is certainly a lot easier to grasp than trying to understand a buy menu, and playing with infinite money vs economy is also quite a gap as well. So, basically, I don't think the tendency to split casual and competitive is that different a concept in CS versus TF2, but it certainly is more extreme in the latter.